Ahrefs

What Makes Ahrefs Different

Ahrefs crawls the web with its own bot (AhrefsBot) and maintains an index of over 35 trillion known links (Ahrefs, 2025). This is the second-most active crawler on the internet after Google. The size of this index is what makes its backlink and keyword data reliable.

Ahrefs processes about 8 billion pages every 24 hours (Ahrefs, 2025). This crawl frequency means the data you see is relatively fresh, not weeks or months old.

Site Explorer

Site Explorer is the tool you will use most. Enter any domain (yours or a competitor's) and get a complete view of its organic search performance, backlink profile, and paid advertising.

The overview shows:

• Domain Rating (DR) — a score from 0 to 100 measuring the strength of a site's backlink profile
• Organic traffic estimate — estimated monthly visits from organic search
• Organic keywords — total keywords the site ranks for
• Backlinks — total number of backlinks pointing to the domain
• Referring domains — unique websites linking to the domain

The Organic Keywords tab is where competitive intelligence happens. You can see every keyword a competitor ranks for, their position, the estimated traffic each keyword sends, and the keyword difficulty score. Sort by traffic to find the keywords driving the most visitors to their site.

Backlink Analysis

The Backlinks report shows every link pointing to a domain or specific page. You can filter by link type (dofollow, nofollow), anchor text, referring domain rating, and when the link was first or last seen.

A study of 11.8 million Google search results found that the number of referring domains correlates with rankings more strongly than any other factor (Backlinko, 2024). Ahrefs makes it easy to see how many unique domains link to any page.

Use the "Best by links" report to find which pages on a competitor's site attract the most backlinks. These pages reveal what type of content earns links in your industry.

Keywords Explorer

Keywords Explorer is Ahrefs' keyword research tool. Enter a seed keyword and get:

• Search volume — estimated monthly searches
• Keyword Difficulty (KD) — estimated difficulty to rank in the top 10
• Traffic Potential — estimated traffic the top-ranking page gets from all keywords it ranks for (not just the one you searched)
• Parent Topic — the broader topic Google associates with this keyword
• SERP overview — the current top 10 results with their metrics

Ahrefs' keyword database covers over 28 billion keywords across 200+ countries (Ahrefs, 2025). The "Traffic Potential" metric is unique to Ahrefs and arguably more useful than raw search volume, because it shows the total traffic opportunity, not just the volume for one query.

Use the "Questions" filter to find question-based keywords for FAQ content. Use "Also rank for" on any top-ranking page to discover related keywords you should cover in the same article.

Content Explorer

Content Explorer is a searchable database of over 15 billion web pages (Ahrefs, 2025). Search for any topic and find the most shared, most linked, or highest-traffic content on that subject.

The power move: search your topic, filter by "Referring domains > 50," and sort by organic traffic. You now see content that both earns links and ranks well. Study these pages to understand what format, depth, and angle works for your topic.

Site Audit

Ahrefs' Site Audit crawls your website and flags technical SEO issues. It checks for:

• Broken links (internal and external)
• Redirect chains and loops
• Missing or duplicate title tags and meta descriptions
• Orphan pages (pages with no internal links pointing to them)
• Slow pages and Core Web Vitals issues
• Structured data errors

Issues are scored by severity (Errors, Warnings, Notices) and grouped by category. The audit re-runs on a schedule you set, so you catch new issues automatically.

Technical SEO issues affect 42% of websites, with broken internal links being the most common problem found during audits (Ahrefs Site Audit Study, 2024).

Rank Tracker

Rank Tracker monitors your positions for specific keywords over time. Add the keywords you care about, and Ahrefs checks your rankings daily. It tracks desktop and mobile separately and shows visibility trends, average position, and traffic estimates.

The visibility metric is particularly useful. It shows what percentage of all possible clicks from your tracked keywords you are capturing. If your visibility is 10%, you are getting roughly 10% of the clicks available from those keywords. Rank tracking accuracy varies by tool, but Ahrefs updates positions daily for tracked keywords across 170+ countries (Ahrefs Rank Tracker Documentation, 2025).

Content Gap Analysis

The Content Gap tool (inside Site Explorer) compares your domain against competitors and shows keywords they rank for that you do not. This is one of the most efficient ways to find new content opportunities.

Enter your domain and up to 10 competitor domains. Ahrefs shows every keyword where at least one competitor ranks but you do not. Filter by volume, difficulty, and number of competitors ranking to prioritize the best opportunities.

A Competitor Research Workflow

Here is a complete workflow for analyzing any competitor in Ahrefs:

1. Enter the competitor's domain in Site Explorer
2. Check their top organic pages (Top Pages report) to see what content drives their traffic
3. Review their referring domains to find link building opportunities
4. Run Content Gap between your site and theirs
5. Check their new and lost backlinks (filter last 30 days) to find active link sources
6. Export keyword lists for any gaps you want to fill

The top 10% of pages on any website typically drive 80% or more of total organic traffic (Ahrefs Content Study, 2024). Identifying those pages for competitors tells you exactly where to compete.